Windows 8 now has a slide-away lock screen like so many other OSes designed for a touch interface. However on a non-touch PC/laptop this is just an extra annoying step in logging in. There is an option to disable it, but this also turns off the password requirement.

Is there a way to disable the lock screen, and have Windows wake up directly to the password entry screen? Often when pressing a key to hide it there will be a noticeable delay before password entry is accepted, and no indicator, so one can easily lose the first character or so that they attempt to type, thus failing the login attempt.

If you do not own the "Pro" version of Windows 8 then you do not have access to the policy editor. You can still edit the policy, but you need to go through regedit instead. It's only slightly more complicated that way:

To complete the answer, as far as I know the Core version of Windows 8 doesn't ship the policies editor. In that case users can accomplish the same by editing the registry. The corresponding entry is a DWORD named NoLockScreen under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization (if that key doesn't exist you can create it). A value of 1 would disable the lock screen. 0, or deleting it would enable it again ;).
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XandyNov 1 '12 at 15:42

You can also hit the up arrow on the keyboard, it will swipe the lock screen up
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Amadeusz WieczorekNov 1 '12 at 16:08

1

@Amadeu: or Enter, or any alphabetical, or almost any key, really :)
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DzinXNov 1 '12 at 16:14

I recently tried this on a computer that lacked the policy editor, the registry change did not seem to work however.
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zeelFeb 25 '13 at 2:11